Too slowly, Florida gets tougher on human trafficking

It’s a rare day when Gov. Ron DeSantis visits Broward.

But there he was Tuesday in Lighthouse Point, signing into law a long-overdue legislative package of bills designed to reduce the horrific and worsening problem of human trafficking of children and adults for sex, forced labor and other crimes.

For years in Florida, the scourge of trafficking has received more tough talk from politicians than aggressive action. The momentum for a better strategy received much-needed attention from a Sun Sentinel investigative series, Innocence Sold, and an accompanying podcast published in November.

The reports laid bare a failed system in which a deadly and illicit child sex trade flourishes, in part by allowing hotels to escape responsibility for thousands of violations of a weak state anti-trafficking law. The series showed how a privatized foster care system sometimes lures adolescent kids into an evil world of trafficking, rather than rescuing them from a worse fate on the streets.

Florida’s shame

Florida is a marketplace for rampant human trafficking. As one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, it has a proliferation of hotels and motels, a highly mobile and transient population, and large population of immigrants who are especially vulnerable to being trafficking victims, research shows.

The new laws are an improvement, and they dovetail nicely with the law-and-order theme of DeSantis’ undeclared bid for the presidency, which may be official any day now. At the Coastal Community Church in Lighthouse Point, the governor directly linked trafficking to a favorite talking point, the flow of “illegal aliens” into the United States. He cited findings of

a statewide grand jury he impaneled last year that focused mostly on human smuggling — a different, albeit related, problem.

The governor, joined by legislative leaders and a trafficking victim, signed a bill (SB 7064) that allows victims to file civil lawsuits and collect damages against strip clubs and other adult entertainment businesses, and toughens penalties on businesses for failing to verify ages and identities of workers.

A second law (HB 1465) makes human trafficking subject to minimum mandatory prison sentences. A third law (SB 1690) closes the loophole that allows hotels and motels to evade fines and requires staff training, security and services for safe houses, which are shelters for victims of human trafficking or sexual exploitation.

That law, effective July 1, will end the possibility of lodging establishments avoiding fines after the first time they violate rules on trafficking-related signs and training.

Bipartisan support

Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book, D-Davie, called passage of the bills “bipartisan work” (a rarity in this era of culture-war divisions) to combat a crime that occurs “in plain sight in every single community across the state.”

Also at Tuesday’s bill signing was Savannah Parvu, 36, of Umatilla, a child trafficking victim and the daughter of two parents who were alcoholics and drug abusers. Parvu gave a chilling first-person account of how her mother sold her for a $10 piece of crack cocaine, and a Central Florida hotel covered up for her father’s criminal trafficking rather than protect her.

“The staff there actually assisted him,” Parvu said. “They knew what was happening, but they never did anything to help me.”

Parvu’s harrowing experience shows how this legislation still doesn’t go far enough.

In an apparent bow to the influence of the state’s powerful tourism industry, state lawmakers deleted a provision that would have allowed trafficking victims to sue hotels and motels and collect damages unless a business could prove it had taken specific steps to curb trafficking. The Sun Sentinel quoted a sponsor of a House anti-trafficking law, Rep. Taylor Yarkosky, R-Montverde, as citing pressure from the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association, a statewide hotel industry trade group.

“(If ) we can’t protect them from human trafficking,” Yarkosky said of children, “then I would ask this question to everyone in Tallahassee: What in the hell are we doing here, then?”

By the time the Legislature meets again in Tallahassee next January, there will tragically be many more victims of human trafficking in Florida. Lawmakers can build on this year’s progress by giving more protection to victims from any business that turns a blind eye to these horrific crimes.

Help is available. The National Human Trafficking Hotline is 888-373-7888.

COURTESY Gov. Ron DeSantis throws a pen which he used to sign an anti-human trafficking bill to the crowd on Tuesday at the Coastal Communtiy Church in Lighthouse Point.